Tag Archives: Middle Class fallacy

Hardly any social mobility. No hypogamy. No hypergamy (the small-scale sociology theory seems to be wrong over many generations when you look at the genetics). I wasn’t expecting that. It shows psychology has its limits too, when they’re looking in the wrong place (teachers) and asking the wrong questions (how valuable is an education?).

What we see is clearly an argument for sexually selective Leagues. (Bear in mind, it would count MMV as well as SMV). It seems to be mostly genes.

The idea that this transmission of status over time has been as Clark found it squares well with another facet I discuss frequently on this blog: the fact that parenting doesn’t have much of a lasting effect on children’s outcomes.

Although parenting can let the team down if it’s atrocious (i.e. modern) and without instinct. But it seems later generations might have hope of regaining lost ground. Presumably there’s regression to mean in parenting quality, and since most people are totally forgotten by the 4th generation it’s no wonder we see no effect.

The interesting thing is that even the people who take me seriously on this point still believe that there’s something their efforts can do, beyond keeping their children fed, clothed, clean, and cognizant of the basic ways of the world. Steven Sailer frequently suggests that the outcome of poorer children, especially those of color (mostly Hispanics) would improve if they had fewer of them, and hence could afford to invest more in each, despite the fact that this doesn’t hold up in adoption studies.

It’s an oxytocin-based instinct, but it only seems that the majority of the affectionate instinct actually needs to be applied to the spouse (in both directions) to maintain the stability for the children. Another reason divorced parents are awful. Also, I wonder whether this would change the minds of any cuckolds saying they ‘don’t mind’ if a child isn’t theirs, as long as they raise them? This applies to women raising the children of former wives too.

This study found that “cultural transmission” (i.e., from parents) couldn’t explain the pattern seen in children (indeed, the parent-child correlation wasnegative once you removed heredity). The non-parental environment explained the variance, suggesting that other influences, such as peers, likely explain the results.

Why else do you think mothers care so much about who their child has for friends?
It can predict crime, drug use and all sorts (peer pressure).

This issue squares the matter with Gregory Clark’s results. That is, when you consider other facets, education per se doesn’t seem to mean much in the end. Apparently, you can’t teach moxie. This is revealed by the fact that every trait “going in” that shapes a person (and should be relevant to educational attainment) reliably shows absolutely no shared environment impact.

The Middle Class fallacy. Grit and resilience come into it too (the upper class have it, the middle class despise it).
You could put little Tarquin in the best school to ever exist, it won’t make him a genius.

…including one’s work preferences and interests, the presence or absence of mental disorders, and including the features of a person we think of as “character.” Parents leave no lasting effect on any of it, aside from what they bequeath to their children genetically….

The upper class try to teach their children life skills like grit too.
The middle class assumes it will just happen. Guess who wins.
We’ve all heard comparisons of our character or habits to deceased family members, right?
I would like to see hobbies compared genetically because birth order and sibling rivalry supposedly make children opt into different ones despite genetic similarity.

Who you choose to have children with is the most important decision of your entire life. No pressure.

Indeed, when we consider the effect of measurement error (adding it to the heritability estimate and to the somewhat nonsensical negative gene-environment correlation values), the heritability of political attitudes and social values skyrockets, being upwards of 85% (74%) for views towards pornography in women (men). The heritability of overall political orientation, when accounting for measurement error, teeters on 100%!

Liberals and conservatives will be battling for a long time to come.

Bodes well for r/K.
I think this is why K-types seem so betrayed when divorced. Total speculation. I’m sure a lot of spouses cheated on would like to stone the 3rd party responsible. Religion is a good excuse to kill the competition.

(Hence the “shared environment” ≠ “all environment.”)

That needs to be made clear for the all would-be sociologists.

But that’s all OK, yes? The whole point of education is to “shape” the raw individual beyond his/her genetic predilection, right? Wrong.

Education cannot change potential, it can only improve performance up to the ceiling OF potential, how many times do I have to say this?

The problem is that everything that comes out, the adultout comes, shows a shared environment impact that is also zero.

If your parents were screw-ups and couldn’t hold a marriage together, you’ll probably be a screw-up too. It’s the circle of life.

OK, so you might be willing to accept that you can’t shape your child’s personality or values. You can’t control his major life outcomes. You can’t even control how much money he will go on to earn. But surely you can do something useful, like leave your children a lifetime of happiness, right? After all, I believe, and advise, that a parent’s key duty, after ensuring that their children grow up healthy and safe, is to ensure that each has a happy childhood. Surely that must count for something, too,? It does, in the form of fond memories of childhood.

This is so brutal. So redpill.
The lesson is choose your spouse wisely and once you’ve got them, stick with them. You can’t choose your own genetic profile, but you can damn well choose theirs! (This is why women are so selective).

One’s lifetime of happiness boils down to genes and to the fickleness of luck.

I’m one of the lucky people who can be contented in a shed.
It’s like when I was told Follow your Dreams and the money will follow! I was always like ‘but if you are happy, why do you still need the money to justify your decision?’, that art teacher did not like me, not one bit. School really is a prison but that’s news to nobody, frankly. You’re there to do a thing (pass grades) and finally they grant your release. Might as well game the system and learn other, more useful things with their resources while you’re there.

He will be who he will be. It’s only my job to help him get there, and pass on the legacies of all those who came before him. I did all I could do: I married well. Beyond that it’s in the hands of “fate”.

That’s the healthy parental attitude, not the Trophy Child, as I call them, where they need something to brag about like it’s a prize-winning pet or the Dead Dreams Model where the child is pressured to do what the parent wishes they had (a whole career, not little stuff).

The vagaries of the circumstances no doubt imbued good fortune on some and dashed the success of many others.

Whether your society (born into) was just and meritocratic, I’d wager.

But through it all, the thing that is at the root of continuity – DNA – remained the active ingredient to propagate lineages in their respective places through out the ages.
It is as it was said in the Richard Donner Superman films: “The son becomes the father, and father becomes the son.”

The C2 exam was just hard for no reason. You can’t just set questions so hard and still expect people to pass with good grades or don’t Edexcel know we want to make it into Uni.

I just want to ask the people who set the quetions for this exam, if this is how hard exam questions were when they were in College then i dont think they will be where they are right now.

You need to pity us students who have been revising all year just for Edexcel to set some bullshit exam. The fact that people are signing my petition just proves how difficult it was.

When I was at school, this was the material we studied at 11-12 years old, and we were average to bright level, and the GCSE is intended for 16 year olds to sit. They shouldn’t be allowed to sit the tests in the first place, can we please bring in IQ now to qualify??? Reminds me of –

Can’t do quadratics or fill in n in the example to test it? [good practice] Thank a teacher.
This is quantifiable evidence of the decline.

Worst of all? This was apparently near the end (harder) of the Higher Tier (hardest) paper.

– because they themselves, are often middle class and part of the problem.

A poor white male in a trailer park isn’t better off than a middle class Chinese girl.

Slapping on a different label is like trying to put an Apple sticker on your Microsoft laptop.

This relates somewhat to what I dubbed the Middle Class Fallacy, namely that money (educayshun!) can overcome genetic differences. How much funding did they plough into Head Start and ghetto schools? And how many smart (but poor and often white) kids have gone unfunded for being the wrong class/race?